1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control apparatus, a printing control method, and a storage medium. The present invention is especially suitable when used for printing with a printing apparatus managed by a server.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to strengthen internal control and security, and to reduce personal computer (PC) management costs, the trend towards using thin clients, in which applications are not installed in a client PC even in an office environment, is accelerating. In conjunction with this, printing systems in which a print server manages all of the printers and manages the print jobs is now mainstream even in printing work. In such a printing system, the PC client does not hold the printer drivers or printer objects.
Thus, when managing all printers with a print server, the number of printers being managed increases dramatically. Consequently, a user who is performing printing has to select a printer from among a large number of printers. Therefore, in order to select a suitable printer, the user has to know in advance information about the printer drivers, the printer capabilities and the like. Especially, in an environment in which a mobile terminal whose location is not specified is used as the client terminal, the amount of printer information that can be obtained by the client terminal can be low. In such a case, in actual practice it can take some time until printing can be started. In view of this situation, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-58306 discusses a system in which the print server automatically selects the printer which is suited to the printing conditions.
However, in the technology discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-58306, since the printer is automatically selected by the print server based on only the printing conditions, the automatically selected printer may not be a printer known to the user, and a print product may be output at an unintended location. Therefore, user-friendliness and print product security are not guaranteed. Further, to change the printer for outputting the print product from the automatically selected printer to a closer printer, the user has to specify that printer from among a large number of printers. Moreover, the user has to perform other tasks, such as setting the printer driver. Consequently, it is not easy to output a print product from a closer printer.